Trial by Fire

by Frances Fyfield

  Harold had not looked at it for years; only the whisky ever brought it to mind, and even then he remembered William's reaction. Remembered, and then discarded the memory.

  Too close to home and all the familiar spectres of failure.

  William was sitting in the corner of the kitchen hoping that the subject of the summerhouse would drop into silence, relieved and grateful when it did and other topics, brightly introduced by his mother, took the place of a dangerous pause. He had slowly learned the value of silence, knew he had them in thrall with the tantrums they dared not question. He had only to begin kicking his legs against the stool on which he sat with his usual dull but insistent rhythm to reduce them to either sullen fear or resentment; either worked as well, but on this occasion there was no need, and he was grateful.

  William's mental development remained at the age of that of a cunning ten-year-old, untapped by the local schools who had abandoned him one after the other or the child psychiatrist whom he had abandoned, while his manual dexterity and physical strength overreached his years. The combination was frightening. Bernadette treasured his rare smiles, treated him with distant loyalty and affection, while Harold patted his black head occasionally and otherwise ignored him.

  Bernadette knew that in William's life the summerhouse had more than the significance of memory, but did not know why. She guarded her wilful ignorance on his behalf, aware that the abandoned structure was a lair to him. She suspected Harold knew, but they did not discuss the subject.

  `What will you do this afternoon?' She scolded with questions she knew he would not answer, gentle interrogatives. 'Get out, son. The weather's gorgeous; we'll not keep you.' He surprised her with half a grin, half a grunt, slid off his stool clumsily, made for the open kitchen door. Fine if he was ordered out. He would have preferred to sidle away unobserved, but either way he was gone with a blessing, and no one could call him back.

  The garden into which he strolled had been planned with an informality quite unsuitable to such a large and impressive house. A cracked and weed-filled path of slippery stones led down the shady side of it flanked by shrubs for the whole length of the fifty yards that led to the summerhouse. A line of small trees marked the end of the garden, perhaps intended to be magnificent but now a scrubby demarcation zone surrounded by thicket. The lawn was punctuated with more overgrown shrubs in islands, designed to be discreet, but now well developed into quarrelling bushes of enormous size, roots obscured by long grass that would have done credit to a hayfield.

  Cornflowers and cockles from the last year's barley in the field beyond had seeded among the grass, and a dead tree lay rotting across the path. William clambered over it, too old now for the fascination with termites that had once kept him for hours, and quickened his step until he yanked open the summerhouse door.

  Inside, the floor was swept, not recently or well, but swept. Most but not all of the jars of kerosene were covered with cobwebs, as were the windows where a fly buzzed insistently.

  William picked up one of the dusters from the floor and killed the fly instantly. The last broken pieces of chair were piled in one corner along with sacking and newspaper, and through the aperture behind the bar, a hole in the floor normally closed with half a door mounted on a clumsy hinge, he could see a light. Leading into the cavern below was a household stepladder, also broken but still usable.

  He began a short but dexterous descent of the ladder, which had only three intact steps.

  `William? Is that you?'

  `Course it's me. Who else would it be, silly?'

  `Don't call me silly.'

  He clambered down the steps, face wreathed in the smile the world so rarely saw, stood in the light of the butane lamp, and surveyed their domain. There were mattresses beneath a covering of blankets, a chair, boxes doubling for tables and containers, a locked cupboard, makeshift shelves from wood and bricks, a camping cooker that had been another of Harold's bargains, a blackened pan, and a few tins of food. The floor was covered with an old remnant of carpet, dirty but swept, and on the mattresses sat Evelyn Blundell, paste earrings sparkling in the light, wearing her jeans and nothing else, her white pubescent chest catching the glow of the lamp.

  `You're late, William. I told you four o'clock. I've got to go soon. I thought . . .' For once the confident voice faltered. 'I thought you'd gone and told them all.'

  The edge of fear in her tone sharpened into reproof, a terrible threat implicit in it, and he hurried, tripping over his feet and his words to reassure her. Èvie, Evie, I wouldn't do that.

  Couldn't do that, Evie, I promise, not ever.' The sharpness of her face had carried tears into his eyes. He knelt beside the mattress as she sat up, hair tumbling to her shoulders.

  `Promise?' she asked, her voice as sharp as a blade.

  `Course I promise.'

  Ìt's our secret place. Hide everything when I've gone. Promise. Cross your heart and hope to die in boiling oil if you don't.'

  Ì promise.' He was looking at her, his eyes filled with rapture, suffused with complete adoration as he sat beside her, fingered the earrings, laughed in loud relief at the softening of her features. Evie could look so terrifying, especially in this light, her tiny figure as threatening as a whip, eyes blazing with scorn, reducing him to one of those crawling beetles they sometimes saw on the floor, blinkered things, looking desperately for light as William sought relief.

  Not today. Today he could tell she was relieved to see him, had made him a cup of weak sugary tea, which he loved, even without the milk he was supposed to have provided if the kitchen had not been so wary. 'Couldn't bring any,' he explained, gesturing to the cup she handed him, never taking his eyes off her face.

  `S'all right,' she said, her favourite phrase. 'Doesn't matter.'

  Silence fell. He drained the lukewarm tea in one gulp, set the mug on a box, shuffled closer to her, smiling his beatific, hopeful smile, tentatively reaching a hand toward her, questioning with his pale and vacant eyes.

  `S'all right,' she repeated. 'You can. Only today, mind.'

  Then she lay back on the mattress, small nipples pointing toward the dusty ceiling, her eyes closed. William lay beside her awkwardly, stroking her slender torso with one disproportionately large hand that could have spanned her waist. She was so small, so neat, her skin seemingly stretched over bone and the taut and miniature muscles that held the flesh to this graceful skeleton. He placed his mouth around one of the nipples and sucked like a child at breast.

  Òw. That hurts.' But William was panting by now, one hand below the waistband of her jeans, button undone as she had left it undone. She always hoped he might change his mind, but gradually learned that there was as much chance of that as of her baby nephew refusing a feed; she considered both pastimes — that witnessed, this undergone — equally inexplicable and unnecessary, but she was prepared for foolishness all the same. The zipper of her jeans fell away at his touch. He felt lucky today: he had been so good, so very good; he did not know precisely why she should be so pleased with him, but she was. 'Can I?' he whispered. 'Can I really, please?'

  Òh, all right,' she was murmuring, eyes still firmly shut, 'but only if you take it out, you know, before. Only if you take it out.' Then she sat up abruptly, pulled the jeans off her legs while he pulled down his loose canvas trousers. 'Oh, God,' she said in the tone of a bored sophisticate, looking at him with a distaste he did not recognize. 'Hurry up, will you, before it grows any more, but touch me, so it won't hurt.'

  He touched, a rough and peremptory stroking, with his breath arriving in clumsy gasps while she lay supine, legs splayed, faint traces of Vaseline on her inner thighs, her arms loose by her sides in an attitude of resigned waiting. 'A little bit more,' she commanded, and he obeyed in an agony of impatience, then stopped, rolled on top of her, and thrust himself inside, pumping against her unresisting thinness, remembering her order in his final abandon, whimpering as he released his sticky souvenirs on to her stomach and the blanket. Then he rolled to
one side, clutching her hand, and was almost instantly asleep, the smile transfixed on his flushed face.

  The butane lamp guttered. Evelyn sighed in the silence broken only by his breathing, drew her arm from beneath him, slid down the wall side of the bed. She picked up his T-shirt, scrubbed at her abdomen with something like a housewife's disgust, and then, as an afterthought, placed it over the small remnants on the blanket. After that, she rolled the unresisting form of William on to his chest. She put on her clothes and turned off the lamp, leaving him in the dim glow of daylight filtering through the cellar entrance, and made for the steps.

  He would waken in minutes; she was only just becoming familiar with the pattern after these occasions. It was time for her to leave, avoiding all the tiresome affection that followed. He might wake on his own and cry for her and that was all for the best, when she came to think of it; it might make him more grateful for these rare privileges, these conversationless and far from invariable Sunday treats that seemed to matter so much to him for reasons she could not really fathom, given the vague distaste they inspired in her. They had learned thus far together from the pile of pornographic magazines in the corner, from pictures that had frightened poor William to death, but they had not quelled her curiosity nor eased his desperate longing.

  `S'all right,' she said to herself, as if reciting a litany while emerging into the blinding light outside the summerhouse.

  `S'all right, really. Time to go home now.' She remembered the fat constable in the kitchen, the snores of her father, wondered if she might have cut too fine her own timetable, broke into a run.

  Looking back from halfway down the length of the field, she was almost sorry to have left him. Then she thought of the ridiculous pictures in those magazines, giggled, paused and stretched in the middle of the windswept barley-field, sprinted home.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A pile of pornographic magazines and videos, bagged in black plastic, sat accusingly in the corner of the office Helen shared with two other solicitors whose desks were currently empty.

  The day before, with a speed and deftness that annoyed her senior colleagues, she had gone through the pornography, drafted summonses, requisitioned statements, and demanded the material that was missing — two hours' work to Helen, a full day to anyone else. Now she immersed herself in another exhibit list, professional antennae twitching, gripped by the emergence of the narrative of the Branston murder, working on three levels, absorbing the story, but still ticking off the irrelevancies, isolating hearsay, sorting the appropriate order of witnesses, giving the thing its courtroom shape, conscious all the time of a mistake.

  Even while she listed the further inquiries and inevitable missing links, she was remembering that Redwood, the branch crown prosecutor who ruled her life, had been out of the office the day before and that was the single reason why she had been allocated the case at all. Redwood's deputy had sent her the papers only because he was free of the insecurities and strange chauvinistic jealousies that afflicted his boss, and he wanted a competent hand at the tiller.

  Sooner or later Redwood would intervene; the speed of the intervention would only depend on how soon he could find an excuse. Helen was prepared for something of the kind, had schooled herself not to resent it, and was determined to do her professional best for the case before interruption. In the meantime, what she had read disturbed her.

  The resolution of the case was so neat, so complete, so quick. A faultless report from Bailey, the contents of which he had refused to discuss with her at home, like a writer being secretive about a new opus. She could see why. Dismissing from her own mind any knowledge of the protagonists, she was dismayed by the comprehensive evidence, the tidy jigsaw puzzle of it, ready to be assembled in front of a jury with no missing pieces.

  It was hardly the mandate of a prosecutor to query such a satisfying picture. Not for the crown to show that Sumner didn't kill the woman, only that he did. The defence must raise the doubt if doubt was to be raised, but in Helen's perfectionist mind, that was never enough when life imprisonment hung in the balance. She believed the Crown must show it has explored every avenue, drawn a blank at the feet of any other possible culprit, examined the motives of many, looked closely at husband, woman rival, even children. God forbid.

  Here the target had stepped into the net without a murmur and never a sideways glance from the investigators for anyone else. Helen's instinct told her to insist that the police begin all over again: 'Where would you have looked if you had not found him? Look there now. We cannot rely on the defence to do it for us. It is the Crown that must see justice done, facts fully explored. Go on; turn a few more stones.'

  Fidget, light a cigarette, debate the next move. Phone Bailey in professional guise, lace the conference with a colleague to make sure it is fully impersonal, get on with it before Redwood uses his undoubted knowledge of the West-Bailey relationship to justify massive interference. Still inured with belief in justice and a passion for the truth, Helen wanted to ask questions. Phone Bailey. It was always a pleasure, that amiable conflict between two highly tuned minds meeting on a similar level of legal experience. She relished it.

  As she dialled the number she could have dialled blindfolded, footsteps sounded on the worn carpet outside her door, the familiar, clipped steps of the branch crown prosecutor.

  Helen replaced the receiver quickly, hating conversations with Bailey to be overheard as much as her chief hated the idea of one of his independent prosecutors cohabiting with a senior police officer. Nor did she wish for Brian Redwood — with his penchant for performance indicators, budgets, time spent per case per day, and that integrity of his which only operated at the least imaginative level — to be party to any decision she might make at this stage.

  He had a love of rectitude and rules, a chronic dislike of all police officers under the rank of chief inspector, and a profound suspicion of Helen West. In addition to all his other neuroses, he believed that if he pushed and bullied his underlings, they would work harder, having failed to see that no lawyer chose this work who could not lead himself. 'Our Brian,' as he was known without affection, remained an interfering and harrying boss whose meddling was not matched by any semblance of support or guidance. He resented anyone who did not share his tunnel vision.

  `Not in court, then?' he barked accusingly.

  Às you see,' said Helen. 'Paperwork day.'

  Òh. Wanted to see you anyway. Getting on all right?'

  `Fine, thank you.' Maybe he simply wanted to talk and she was the only one to hand on a very quiet Wednesday; she would do as well as any, better than most, but with a sinking heart, she doubted that was all.

  `You got a file from your, er, boyfriend. Whatever.' Disapproval was implicit in his tone. 'You aren't the right grade to deal with murders, of course.' Helen forbore to mention that she had already prosecuted more murders under the auspices of previous offices than Brian Redwood had in a far gentler lifetime than her own. There was no point remarking on it. She was in the habit of keeping her head down with Mr Redwood, anything for a quiet life, but while putting her in place with this initial salvo, he was clearly in need of her opinion, however much he hated asking.

  `This Branston murder . . . Mrs Blundell . . . Do you talk to your detective chief superintendent about it? Bailey, isn't it? Very good investigating officer.'

  `No, we don't talk about it,' Helen lied with convincing sincerity, wishing it was not almost true. It's better we don't.'

  `Quite right, quite right.' He nodded sagely, swallowing the unlikelihood without difficulty and adding inconsistently, 'But you do know the facts?'

  `Roughly, yes.'

  `The case is quite straightforward.' Redwood said. 'Open and shut. Fellow wants to end relationship with older married woman, loses his cool, hits her, and then stabs her in argument. Funny place to pick, though, Bluebell Wood. He buries her and goes home, leaving enough traces for an army: walking stick covered with blood and hair, hers, of course; heavy foot
prints all over the place, made by his very distinctive boots; cigarette ends in the clearing, his brand.'

  `Have the police found her clothes, jewellery, handbag?' Helen asked, knowing full well they had.

  In the compost heap in his garden. I ask you, what a fool. The handbag and clothes, all neatly packaged. Jewellery and money from handbag, gone without trace, greedy bastard.'

  Helen was silent, allowing the exclamatory flow to continue, wondering on the nature of our Brian's problem. Not the same as hers. He never suffered from second thoughts or surprise.

  `No alibi, of course, though the girlfriend did try.'

  She remembered. Poor Christine had attempted to say Antony had been at her house before midnight on the night of the murder, gave it up when Bailey gently pointed out to her that he already knew she had not seen Antony for two days after the woman's death, a knowledge he had only gleaned because Helen had told him. In view of the prisoner's limited admissions, such a pretence was no help in any event. Any chance of Helen resurrecting her friendship with Christine had died after that, but that was not within Redwood's knowledge, nor should it be.

  Òne problem, though,' Redwood ruminated. 'Man won't admit killing her.' His voice was hurt, as if Sumner's refusal to confess guilt was a personal insult. 'Intelligent chap, too.

  Can't understand it.'

  Intelligence had very little to do with it, Helen thought, while trying not to smile. Nor was it incumbent on any defendant to admit guilt in the interest of expediency and saving public money, even if he was guiltier than sin. He had the right to protest his innocence all the way to the grave, causing storms of fury and irritation en route if it helped him at all. Man must fight like a cat for freedom, fight dirty if he must, lie if he must. That's what I would do, she thought: I'd make them prove every damn thing. 'How inconsiderate of him,' was what she said out loud, the irony of her words quite lost on her companion.